Running Out Of Air, McCoy/Jocelyn
Title: Running Out Of Air
Author: hypatia_82
Word count: ~1720
Rating: PG
Feedback: Encouraged and appreciated.
Warnings: Angst and bitter!McCoy, if those are warnings
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it’s not mine.
Pairing: McCoy/Jocelyn
Summary: Theirs is a slow decline, a slow decay and he still doesn’t know how it started.
The thing is, he muses one day over a tepid cup of coffee, that he’s not sure exactly when, how or why things between them started the slippery slide from happy to this - to where they are now. He’s not sure but, and here the right corner of his lips curl up into mutation between a wry smile and a sneer, if you ask Jocelyn, she’d probably say it was his fault. It’s always his fault, his mistake, his inability to do anything right by her. He’s not sure of the specifics, but he has an idea or two, and none of them make him feel any better, because yeah, most of it is probably his fault. It’s why he’s stopped trying to fight back when she sits across from him, face drawn and carefully hidden emotions as obvious as the pale pink of her expensively manicured nails, and tells him calmly what he’s done to hurt her this time. He utters the obligatory apologies, they don’t hold much meaning to him anymore, and sips his coffee and tries to diagnose his own marriage, to find the cause of the pathogen that’s slowly breaking down his life. He’s pretty sure whatever it is has a one hundred percent fatality rate.
He’s a doctor, it’s what he does. If something is broken, he fixes it. If someone is hurting, he finds the cause and makes them stop hurting. But he can’t stop Jocelyn’s hurting anymore than he can his own, and that feels like blame and impotence and failing and leaves a taste more bitter than the rapidly cooling coffee in his mouth.
It’s not that he hasn’t tried. When he first sensed things were starting to go haywire, he tried talking with her. Tried to make it better. Forced himself to be open about how he felt, something that was much easier back when he didn’t have thick, calloused layers of guilt to slice through to get to his heart and emotions. That was back when they actually talked. When he could tell her that it was kinda hard to juggle a wife, medschool and a baby, and make it all work, when she was too caught up in her own life and work to bother asking about his.
He’s done talking, he thinks. She never really listens anyway, so what’s the point? They sit in tense, expectant silence for a while, her having dropped his latest mistake in his lap and him refusing to rise to her bait and pick it up. He can’t deny the truth of her words, but he can deny (at least in his own head) that she’s without blame. She’s always expecting things to change over night, as if her words, her pain, will work like fairytale magic and he’ll wake up a new and better person. He never does, but he tries to improve the things she thinks he does wrong. He just never improves enough to satisfy her.
He knows he’s a busy man, he knows he works too much, isn’t there enough and isn’t as attentive as he should be, as he used to want to be, when he’s home. He knows that it’s not doing them any good that he stumbles home from the hospital after a late or double shift on occasion and passes out on the couch because his bed is just too far away. And he’s well aware of the fact that he shouldn’t spend his day off buried in his research, but hell if it isn’t better than spending it taking the blame for everything she thinks is wrong with their life.
She gets up from her seat and he doesn’t stop her. Just sighs into his cold coffee and remembers a time when they were happy. When there wasn’t a cautious, bitter edge to his smiles or hers. When they could spend a day wrapped up in each other, laughing openly and freely and the world seemed bright and he felt so light he’d drift away on the slightest breeze. His feet are solidly planted on the ground now.
There are still days when they get along, when they both try to recreate what once was. They’re always filled with tentative smiles, understanding the tenuous ceasefire they’ve silently agreed on. Her eyes are always a little brighter on those days, and he doesn’t feel so much like his heart is made of lead. Those days are worse somehow, because they feel like a mockery of what they once had, a crude and twisted imitation. And they always end with her lips on his cheek or mouth, and he returns the kisses even if they leave him cold and make his skin crawl. It’s not her fault her kisses have that effect on him, he’s a doctor, he knows when he’s projecting his disgust at himself for staying onto her. And that’s why he doesn’t shy away from them. Because she deserves better than that.
He still tells her he loves her because rationally, he knows he does. He just doesn’t feel it anymore, and the words always leave a rancid taste in his mouth. She always says them back and he doesn’t want to admit how little he feels when she does.
She’s stopped complaining that he never touches her anymore, which he doesn’t, and now it’s only after those mocking reenactments of happier times when she’s maybe a little drunk that she comes on to him. More often than not, he makes up an excuse before she gets him in a clinch and spends the next three hours working on his PADD until he’s sure she’s asleep and he’s not in danger of being molested when he goes to bed. Jocelyn has always been a selfish lover, he used to like her confidence when they met, but now whenever they do have sex, it leaves her satisfied and him feeling hollow and used. But that’s probably his fault too, somehow.
He thinks it all started when he stopped telling her the little things. Small details from his day, how he talked to so and so. At least, that’s when she says it started and he’s inclined to agree with her. But what she doesn’t seem to get is that he stopped talking because she stopped asking. Then she stopped talking and somewhere along the line he stopped caring if she did. Started distancing himself from her when the nagging accusations started. It took him six months to work up the nerve to sit her down and tell her that she needed to take an active interest in them, in him, if she wanted it to work.
And she did try, and succeeded. But then she expected him to change just as rapidly and he couldn’t. And then the real trouble began. Because he lost all his counter arguments, lost the right to complain about her when she righted her wrongs so efficiently and he couldn’t change as fast as she did. So he knows she’s right when she tells him he’s not trying hard enough. It’s just hard to try when you don’t really see the point anymore. When all his attempts have been forgotten the next time he slips. He thinks about leaving almost daily now, but knows deep down inside that he’s too much of a coward, loves his daughter too much to leave her, to be the one who throws in the towel.
His daughter… The light in his life and the only thing that can draw a genuine smile from him these days. His sweet little Jo who he knows is suffering from the cool indifference that so often separates her parents. Sometimes, he tries for her, just once more, hoping that it’ll be enough to make this just that little bit better so Jo won’t get that sad look in her eye. She’s the most important thing in his world, and what’s dignity or pride when held up against making his little girl happy?
Sometimes, he drinks to forget how much he’s failed at everything but his job, the burn of bourbon going down his esophagus to his stomach a much needed warmth in a chest that’s grown too tight and too cold, and he can almost convince himself that it’s a genuine warm emotion. He’s substituting, he knows, but try as he might, he can’t find it in him to care. It’s not good or healthy or the right way to cope, but he hasn’t been good at doing things the right or the good way for a long time, so he tries this instead.
It’s after one of these nights, with his stomach warm and glowing with cheap bourbon when he comes home and actually considers waking Joce up and seducing her, that he finds her in the living room. He takes the drink she offers and he can tell by the way she moves that she’s had more than a few herself. Which is good, it means she’ll be a lot kinder and more affectionate when he fucks her. The thought makes his starved libido stir and twitch, but is rapidly quenched when he sees her gesture to the neat stack of papers on the table. She downs her drink and with a shaky voice tells him she’s done trying when he won’t and it’s killing her to make an effort when he doesn’t. She doesn’t say it’s his fault, but the words are there anyway. He was done trying to prove her wrong a long time ago.
He nods, signs and finishes his drink before packing a bag and leaving.
Six months, a very messy and expensive divorce, and copious amounts of bourbon later, he’s sitting in the too small, too cold head on a Starfleet shuttle trying his best not to think of death and disease and danger and all the intricate little ways it could crash and burn. He takes a sip from his flask and ignores the Lieutenant’s insistent banging on the door, and thinks that if he dies here, or up there in space, it’ll probably be because of something he failed to do right or good enough. It’ll be his own damn fault, he hears Joce’s voice say in his head, even though she never spoke those precise words.
Author: hypatia_82
Word count: ~1720
Rating: PG
Feedback: Encouraged and appreciated.
Warnings: Angst and bitter!McCoy, if those are warnings
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it’s not mine.
Pairing: McCoy/Jocelyn
Summary: Theirs is a slow decline, a slow decay and he still doesn’t know how it started.
The thing is, he muses one day over a tepid cup of coffee, that he’s not sure exactly when, how or why things between them started the slippery slide from happy to this - to where they are now. He’s not sure but, and here the right corner of his lips curl up into mutation between a wry smile and a sneer, if you ask Jocelyn, she’d probably say it was his fault. It’s always his fault, his mistake, his inability to do anything right by her. He’s not sure of the specifics, but he has an idea or two, and none of them make him feel any better, because yeah, most of it is probably his fault. It’s why he’s stopped trying to fight back when she sits across from him, face drawn and carefully hidden emotions as obvious as the pale pink of her expensively manicured nails, and tells him calmly what he’s done to hurt her this time. He utters the obligatory apologies, they don’t hold much meaning to him anymore, and sips his coffee and tries to diagnose his own marriage, to find the cause of the pathogen that’s slowly breaking down his life. He’s pretty sure whatever it is has a one hundred percent fatality rate.
He’s a doctor, it’s what he does. If something is broken, he fixes it. If someone is hurting, he finds the cause and makes them stop hurting. But he can’t stop Jocelyn’s hurting anymore than he can his own, and that feels like blame and impotence and failing and leaves a taste more bitter than the rapidly cooling coffee in his mouth.
It’s not that he hasn’t tried. When he first sensed things were starting to go haywire, he tried talking with her. Tried to make it better. Forced himself to be open about how he felt, something that was much easier back when he didn’t have thick, calloused layers of guilt to slice through to get to his heart and emotions. That was back when they actually talked. When he could tell her that it was kinda hard to juggle a wife, medschool and a baby, and make it all work, when she was too caught up in her own life and work to bother asking about his.
He’s done talking, he thinks. She never really listens anyway, so what’s the point? They sit in tense, expectant silence for a while, her having dropped his latest mistake in his lap and him refusing to rise to her bait and pick it up. He can’t deny the truth of her words, but he can deny (at least in his own head) that she’s without blame. She’s always expecting things to change over night, as if her words, her pain, will work like fairytale magic and he’ll wake up a new and better person. He never does, but he tries to improve the things she thinks he does wrong. He just never improves enough to satisfy her.
He knows he’s a busy man, he knows he works too much, isn’t there enough and isn’t as attentive as he should be, as he used to want to be, when he’s home. He knows that it’s not doing them any good that he stumbles home from the hospital after a late or double shift on occasion and passes out on the couch because his bed is just too far away. And he’s well aware of the fact that he shouldn’t spend his day off buried in his research, but hell if it isn’t better than spending it taking the blame for everything she thinks is wrong with their life.
She gets up from her seat and he doesn’t stop her. Just sighs into his cold coffee and remembers a time when they were happy. When there wasn’t a cautious, bitter edge to his smiles or hers. When they could spend a day wrapped up in each other, laughing openly and freely and the world seemed bright and he felt so light he’d drift away on the slightest breeze. His feet are solidly planted on the ground now.
There are still days when they get along, when they both try to recreate what once was. They’re always filled with tentative smiles, understanding the tenuous ceasefire they’ve silently agreed on. Her eyes are always a little brighter on those days, and he doesn’t feel so much like his heart is made of lead. Those days are worse somehow, because they feel like a mockery of what they once had, a crude and twisted imitation. And they always end with her lips on his cheek or mouth, and he returns the kisses even if they leave him cold and make his skin crawl. It’s not her fault her kisses have that effect on him, he’s a doctor, he knows when he’s projecting his disgust at himself for staying onto her. And that’s why he doesn’t shy away from them. Because she deserves better than that.
He still tells her he loves her because rationally, he knows he does. He just doesn’t feel it anymore, and the words always leave a rancid taste in his mouth. She always says them back and he doesn’t want to admit how little he feels when she does.
She’s stopped complaining that he never touches her anymore, which he doesn’t, and now it’s only after those mocking reenactments of happier times when she’s maybe a little drunk that she comes on to him. More often than not, he makes up an excuse before she gets him in a clinch and spends the next three hours working on his PADD until he’s sure she’s asleep and he’s not in danger of being molested when he goes to bed. Jocelyn has always been a selfish lover, he used to like her confidence when they met, but now whenever they do have sex, it leaves her satisfied and him feeling hollow and used. But that’s probably his fault too, somehow.
He thinks it all started when he stopped telling her the little things. Small details from his day, how he talked to so and so. At least, that’s when she says it started and he’s inclined to agree with her. But what she doesn’t seem to get is that he stopped talking because she stopped asking. Then she stopped talking and somewhere along the line he stopped caring if she did. Started distancing himself from her when the nagging accusations started. It took him six months to work up the nerve to sit her down and tell her that she needed to take an active interest in them, in him, if she wanted it to work.
And she did try, and succeeded. But then she expected him to change just as rapidly and he couldn’t. And then the real trouble began. Because he lost all his counter arguments, lost the right to complain about her when she righted her wrongs so efficiently and he couldn’t change as fast as she did. So he knows she’s right when she tells him he’s not trying hard enough. It’s just hard to try when you don’t really see the point anymore. When all his attempts have been forgotten the next time he slips. He thinks about leaving almost daily now, but knows deep down inside that he’s too much of a coward, loves his daughter too much to leave her, to be the one who throws in the towel.
His daughter… The light in his life and the only thing that can draw a genuine smile from him these days. His sweet little Jo who he knows is suffering from the cool indifference that so often separates her parents. Sometimes, he tries for her, just once more, hoping that it’ll be enough to make this just that little bit better so Jo won’t get that sad look in her eye. She’s the most important thing in his world, and what’s dignity or pride when held up against making his little girl happy?
Sometimes, he drinks to forget how much he’s failed at everything but his job, the burn of bourbon going down his esophagus to his stomach a much needed warmth in a chest that’s grown too tight and too cold, and he can almost convince himself that it’s a genuine warm emotion. He’s substituting, he knows, but try as he might, he can’t find it in him to care. It’s not good or healthy or the right way to cope, but he hasn’t been good at doing things the right or the good way for a long time, so he tries this instead.
It’s after one of these nights, with his stomach warm and glowing with cheap bourbon when he comes home and actually considers waking Joce up and seducing her, that he finds her in the living room. He takes the drink she offers and he can tell by the way she moves that she’s had more than a few herself. Which is good, it means she’ll be a lot kinder and more affectionate when he fucks her. The thought makes his starved libido stir and twitch, but is rapidly quenched when he sees her gesture to the neat stack of papers on the table. She downs her drink and with a shaky voice tells him she’s done trying when he won’t and it’s killing her to make an effort when he doesn’t. She doesn’t say it’s his fault, but the words are there anyway. He was done trying to prove her wrong a long time ago.
He nods, signs and finishes his drink before packing a bag and leaving.
Six months, a very messy and expensive divorce, and copious amounts of bourbon later, he’s sitting in the too small, too cold head on a Starfleet shuttle trying his best not to think of death and disease and danger and all the intricate little ways it could crash and burn. He takes a sip from his flask and ignores the Lieutenant’s insistent banging on the door, and thinks that if he dies here, or up there in space, it’ll probably be because of something he failed to do right or good enough. It’ll be his own damn fault, he hears Joce’s voice say in his head, even though she never spoke those precise words.